


A Flash of That Smile

by gaygreekgladiator (ama)



Series: Take it Easy [1]
Category: Spartacus Series (TV)
Genre: Bullying, Flashbacks, M/M, Power Imbalance, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 21:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/803674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/gaygreekgladiator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pietros is having a rough time at college; Barca is his advisor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Flash of That Smile

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to rivlee for the encouragement. :)

There was a knock on his office door. Barca called “Come in,” took off his glasses, and looked up from a pile of essays to see Pietros poking his head into the room, a tiny, hesitant smile on his face.

“Pietros! Good to see you. Sit.”

“Thanks, professor. Good to see you, too.”

Pietros let his backpack fall off his shoulder as he sat across from Barca’s desk. Immediately, his eyes found the poster of Maya Angelou on the wall, and he smiled. He did that almost every time; an old childhood favorite, he once said. Pietros loved Barca’s office, tiny and cramped and full of dusty books as it was. It had character, he claimed.

“How have your classes been going?”

“Pretty good, I think. Biology’s not my strength, but I’m passing.”

“Biology is worthless,” Barca grumbled, because as a professor of comparative literature, sometimes he _had_ to bad-mouth STEM fields in order to justify his place in the world. Pietros laughed, and Barca smiled to himself. “Anyway, the reason I emailed you is because it’s just about time to start registering for next semester’s courses. Have you given it any thought?”

Pietros’s smile flickered.

“I have.”

“Okay.” He sounded hesitant, and Barca sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “This is a bit late, and I know we haven’t discussed it—I feel like we talked much more last semester than these past few months.”

_Dear Professor,_

_Thank you for your e-mail. My first week of classes was fine; it’s a bit of an adjustment, obviously, but honestly there’s not much of a difference between my geneds and my high school courses. Poetry of the African Diaspora looks like it’s going to be incredibly interesting, though, so thank you so much for your recommendation._

_Actually, though, I do have a few more questions, so if it’s all right, I think I will drop by during your office hours. I don’t mean to be a bother, but there’s just one or two things I’m a bit worried about._

_Thanks again,  
Pietros Taylor_

_Dear Pietros,_

_Don’t worry about it. I’m your advisor, so I’m here to deal with any questions or concerns you might have. I’ve had students come to my office once a week, just to talk about everything that’s going on. Feel free to do the same._

_Glad to hear classes are doing well._

_Barca Elissa_

 

“I know,” Pietros said. “And I’ve—been doing a lot of thinking, recently, about what to do next semester. And broader questions in general.  Careers and stuff. I think—I would really like to teach,” he confessed, and Barca spread his hands with a grin.

“Far be it from me to tell anyone it’s not a viable option. Although I should warn you: students are, by and large, annoying little shits.”

Pietros laughed and tucked an errant lock of hair behind his ear. He was wearing a tiny gold hoop in his lobe, which was somehow reassuring. He had forsaken the jewelry last semester, and Barca took its reappearance to be a good sign. There was a diamond stud in his cartilage, which he had forgotten about—that had been the first to go—and something new, shining gold, in his inner ear.

“But that’s true of all people, isn’t it?”

“No arguments. So, education major, you’re thinking?”

“Yes. I’m not sure exactly what I want to teach. I’ve always loved art, so maybe a studio art minor, or English. But…” Suddenly, his excitement faded somewhat, and he cleared his throat. “I’ve decided that, whatever I want to study… I don’t want to study it here.”

Barca couldn’t wrap his mind around the words. He leaned back in his chair.

“What do you mean?” he said finally.

“I hate it here. I always have, and you’ve always known that.”

_He crossed his legs and rested his hands on his knee. He looked tense, uncomfortable—very different from the optimistic freshman who had arrived on campus not even a month ago. Barca frowned and clicked play on his background music playlist. That helped some people._

_“So,” he said finally. “What’s bothering you?”_

_“I don’t know. I just thought—there’s twenty thousand people at this school. I thought it would be easier to find… my place. A place. You know? Right now, it’s honestly just feeling like high school. I’m frustrated and—I’m sorry.”_

_“Don’t be sorry,” Barca said. “I get it. When you’re not happy at home…” It was an assumption he had no right to make, really, but he could tell by the look on Pietros’s face that it was true. “…then it’s easy to convince yourself that escape will fix everything, that all you have to do is leave and you’ll find better people. The first time you realize that people are assholes everywhere, it’s tough.”_

_“Yeah,” Pietros said hoarsely. He cleared his throat._

_“Did you go to the Org Fair?”_

_“No.” Pietros looked embarrassed to admit it, and Barca wondered what had prevented him from going—shyness, maybe._

_“Okay, well that’s a place to start, at least. There’s a Creative Writing Club, Ultimate Frisbee, Debate Team, Democrats and Republican organizations, Outing Club. African-American Student Union, Queer Student Union…”_

_Pietros reached up to scratch his ear, and the sleeve of his jacket slipped down almost to his elbow. Barca’s heart plummeted._

_“What the hell is that?”_

_Before Pietros could say anything, Barca had rounded the desk and taken hold of the boy’s arm. Carefully, he pushed back his sleeve again to reveal an ugly blue and purple bruise, red at the edges. Barca got into a fair number of bar fights when he was a kid. Bruises were no stranger to him, but Pietros wasn’t like that, and this ugly mark on his skin frightened him._

_“Did you get into a fight?” he demanded, and could tell by the tenseness in Pietros’s body that there was more to it than that._

_“Yes. It was stupid. I’m fine.”_

_“Pietros…” The boy pulled his arm out of Barca’s grasp. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”_

_“No. Professor, really. I’m fine.” He smiled. “Thank you for letting me borrow that movie, by the way.”_

_“You liked it?”_

_“Loved it.”_

_Barca should have pressed the issue, but Pietros had a wonderful smile that lit up his face, and it was easier to see him happy. Barca turned around and picked out a CD from a local band, a slim volume of poetry, and one of the caramel squares he kept hidden in the bookshelf. He pressed them all into Pietros’s hands._

 

“I know you had a rough first semester,” Barca said slowly. “But a lot of people do. College isn’t easy at first—”

“I don’t need the platitudes, professor, so you can drop it. There’s a difference between having a difficult time adjusting and being _miserable_.”

There was an awkward stillness in the air, before Pietros bent down and rummaged in his backpack. He emerged with an envelope and a piece of paper. He put the envelope on Barca’s desk and pushed it closer.

“I applied to Northbrook College and got accepted as a transfer student. They’ll accept all of my general education requirements, and they have a teaching program that’s very highly regarded. It’s only ten minutes away. I like the area,” he said with a quirk of his lips.

“That’s impressive,” Barca said, barely moving his mouth as he stared down at the envelope, the purple logo printed neatly in the corner. He didn’t know their acceptance rate off the top of his head, but it had to be lower than this place—probably by twenty percent or more.

“I did really well in my classes. My Poetry of the Diaspora teacher wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation.”

Barca pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh.

“Pietros, it’s obvious that you’ve thought about this a lot, but this is the kind of thing we should have talked about.”

“I’ve done fine on my own.”

Barca opened his eyes and looked at him. Pietros was sitting straight-backed, his face set and determined. He looked… not happy, but not miserable, either. Confident. A hell of a lot better than he had five, six months ago. He met Barca’s gaze for a moment, and then looked down.

“You have,” Barca said quietly. “I can see that. But still, this is a very big decision—”

“I already have my dean’s signature,” Pietros interrupted, placing a yellow form on top of the envelope. “To drop out. We talked about it for a while, and she agreed that it was the best thing for me. She was really proud at how much I improved from the first few weeks of class, and I told her it was because of you. It was. You helped me so much this year, and… I need your signature on this. Please.”

“Pietros, are you sure—”

“Barca,” he said, suddenly pleading, and Barca’s heart constricted in pain.

_Barca loved the library. There were a thousand secrets in it. Hidden gems in the shelves, chairs shoved into unexpected places that became perfect study nooks, corners that bore graffiti, sketches, and posters that always made him smile. As a professor, it was beneath his dignity to curl up in one of the secret spaces with a book (he left that to the students), but he still knew where they were._

_There was one particular niche that he had to pass by every time he walked to or from his office; a lone armchair was tucked into a corner with a study carrel on the other side, and a display shelf a few feet above it. The entire space gave an illusion of privacy, and it was that space in which Barca found Pietros crying one late Friday evening._

_He strode forward without thinking, dropped his bag, and knelt on the floor._

_“Oh my god,” Pietros said as soon as he realized that he had an audience._

_“It’s fine, it’s fine.”_

_“No, it’s not. I’m—stupid—I have a paper due at five—”_

_“I’ll get you an extension. Come here.”_

_Pietros wiped at his eyes, took a shaky breath, and packed away his books and laptop. Barca led him back to his office. The lights tittered as they flickered into life, and Barca pulled around the more comfortable chair from the corner. He pointed at it and Pietros sat, with Barca in the chair usually reserved for students. There was no desk between them._

_“There’s nothing you can do.”_

_“You don’t know that.”_

_“Yes I do. If I go to someone with—no offence—actual authority, then it will get worse. If I want anything to happen, then I need—attention, real attention, and I don’t want that.”_

_Barca’s heart was pounding. He remembered what it was like, being nineteen, gay, black, and alone. He had been a different person in a different time, of course, but there was something heartbreakingly familiar in the determinedly closed-off expression on Pietros’s face._

_He took a deep breath and drew back. There were procedures for this. Training._

_“You can talk to a counselor,” he said gently._

_“I tried. I’ll try again,” Pietros promised, but his words rang false, and he stood. “Thanks, professor.”_

_“Barca,” he corrected. He reached up and grasped Pietros’s wrist. “Sit. Please. You can talk to me.”_

_“I know I can, professor. Barca,” he amended. He sighed and sat back in his chair. “But I really don’t want to. No offense. It’s just, I spend enough time thinking about it, and I don’t think talking would help.”_

_Barca’s hand was covering his frown, and his thumb rubbed absently at his skin. He wanted to punch somebody, but that wouldn’t help Pietros—in fact, it would probably most certainly hurt them both, because then Barca would be fired and possibly arrested, and Pietros would lose… an advisor, at the very least. He spread his hands in a questioning gesture._

_“Fine. What would help?”_

_“Talking. I think. About something else, anything else.”_

_Barca smiled faintly._

_“You listened to me rant about Auctus’s stupid dinner party for an hour and a half last week. I think I owe you some conversation.” He hesitated, and then sat forward to take Pietros’s hands in his. Pietros looked up, surprised. “Listen. I’m not saying this because—because I have to. It’s because you’re a smart kid, you’re different, and you’re kind. And you don’t deserve to be made miserable because of that.”_

_Pietros looked at him for a long moment, swallowed thickly, and nodded. Barca stood._

_“I’m going soft in my old age,” he muttered. “Come on. It’s more than my life’s worth to buy you a whisky to bemoan our troubles, but the campus center makes killer milkshakes.”_

_“Thanks, Barca,” Pietros said with a laugh._

 

Pietros leaned closer to rest his forearms on Barca’s desk.

“I've never been happy here,” he said simply. “And no matter what changes, that never does. I could fight back—I know you’ve wanted me to—or I could run. Frankly, the second one sounds more appealing to me. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Barca snapped. “It’s not—I don’t want you to fight. You shouldn’t _have_ to. You shouldn’t have to go, either.”

It was a big university; people transferred out, or dropped out, every year, and Barca generally didn’t put up a fuss. He tried to be helpful, if he could. Even if the kid was an ass who hadn’t thought a single thing through in their lives. That wasn’t Pietros, though. Barca had spent probably more time with Pietros than any of the other students assigned to him, and he _liked_ it. He liked hearing about Pietros’s classes, which were typically boring, or about his interests, which weren’t. He liked offering advice when it was needed, and being a good audience when that was all that was necessary. He liked Pietros.

And that was part of the problem, wasn’t it?

He tapped the pen with a frown as he looked at the paper in front of him. Pietros was talking, listing off some of the pros about Northbrook—smaller classes sizes, higher retention rate, nicer dorms, more interesting classes.

“… And the people who have been bothering me won’t be there. You were right,” he added with a tiny smile. “There are assholes everywhere, and there will be some there, but in a different environment, doing something I love, I think I’ll be able to handle it. Here?” He took a deep, shaky breath, and leaned back. His hands folded in his lap. “I’m not handling it. No matter how well I did this semester. It’s not a good place for me, and I appreciate that you’ve tried to change that, but the best thing you can possibly do for me is to sign that paper. Please.”

Barca nodded briskly.

“Of course I will. If that’s what you want.” His pen hovered over the line for his name, and he hesitated. “Are you sure… this has nothing to do with what happened over break?”

_They ended up resting on Barca’s comfiest pillows, on the floor, with cartons of Chinese food all over Barca’s coffee table. Every thirty minutes or so, he idly reminded himself that this wasn’t weird—he gave his thesis students permission to visit his apartment all the time and his Food, Culture, and Literature course met here once a semester. It just made sense, really, since Pietros was in town anyway (his foster parents had a full house, and he didn’t want to go home that much). And it was Christmas. Definitely not weird._

_Earlier, he had needed to remind himself every five minutes, so he considered this an improvement._

_Pietros made it easier by being… well, one of the most charming people he had ever met, if Barca were being perfectly honest. He was more relaxed than he had ever been on campus, making conversation easily and letting comfortable silence reign when it needed to._

_“Only one fortune cookie,” Pietros said with playful distress._

_“The soup and rice was the only meal. The rest was just random.”_

_“But what do we do about the fortune?”_

_“Take it,” Barca said, smiling, as he pushed the cookie across the table. “You have your whole life ahead of you—you could use the luck.”_

_“I don’t think fortune cookies give you luck,” Pietros said idly. “But if they do—” He held out the cookie with a grin. “Tenure.”_

_Barca rolled his eyes and cracked open the cookie. He glanced at the small slip of paper, and smirked._

_“I need only look in the mirror to find inspiration. Because I am beautiful,” he said dryly. Pietros laughed._

_“Well, not exactly how I would put it, but that’s good news, I suppose?”_

_“Mm.”_

_The conversation died out, but Barca’s gaze remained fixed on Pietros. After a moment, the boy looked back, a hesitant smile on his lips. One of them moved, and then Barca’s hand gently pressed against the back of Pietros’s neck, pulling him closer for a kiss. Pietros moved so that he was kneeling, and both hands came up to frame Barca’s face._

_After a moment, Pietros broke away and took a deep breath. An enormous smile spread across his face, and he looked up at Barca hopefully._

_“Sorry,” he giggled nervously. “I’ve just been—wanting—”_

_“Me too.”_

_His smile was blinding, and Barca leaned forward for another kiss._

 

“I’m sure,” Pietros said quietly. “I wouldn’t—I’m not—”

He was blushing, and Barca felt a flash of instant regret.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. You’re a lot smarter than that,” he said with a grin, and swiftly signed the form. His pen rested against the paper for a moment, and then he quickly handed it back to Pietros, along with his acceptance letter.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. So, teaching—you’re sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Do you speak French? Because I have a few film suggestions that might change your mind.”

Pietros laughed, and almost instantly the conversation turned easy again. It was another twenty minutes before one of his students knocked lazily at the door. Barca sent her out to the main hallway to wait, but as she disappeared, Pietros stood.

“I should go, anyway. Thanks for signing everything, and thanks for being a really great advisor. You, honestly you made this place bearable, and I appreciate it.”

Barca nodded mutely, but Pietros didn’t move to the door.

“Can I… I’m moving back in late July, to start work off-campus, and I’ll probably be staying in town year-round from now on, so. Can I see you again?”

_He could feel Pietros’s quick pulse beneath his fingers, and hear his heavy breathing. His knees fell open, and Pietros pressed against him eagerly. Barca ran his hands over the boy’s shoulders, feeling the wonderful solid heat of him, and sighed. Slowly, he pulled away._

_“What?” Pietros asked, looking at him with wide, giddy eyes. It hurt to look at him, and Barca cupped his smooth cheek in one hand._

_“You… I’m sorry. You have to go.”_

_Pain flickered across Pietros’s face. He bit his lip, and looked away._

 

Slowly, Barca put down his pen, stood, and walked over to Pietros. This close, he could better see the gold jewelry in Pietros’s ear—it was a tiny sunburst. He smiled, and leaned down to softly press his lips to Pietros’s.

“I would love that,” he said softly.

“Okay. Okay—thank you. I’ll see you then.”

Pietros threw a grin over his shoulder before he left. Barca smiled to himself and turned back to his desk.


End file.
